A week with a Kindle.

December 30, 2010

But I don’t feel a flame.

So just before the holidays, I got my Christmas gift from work. A shiny new Kindle.

This is the first time I have ever used an E-reader. It has never been something particularly interested. Especially at the price tag. I mean have you seen how much these things cost? That’s a lot of beer.

So the Kindle arrives and at first I am thinking, “I should probably just go ahead and Ebay the fucker.” But I didn’t. Instead after debating it, we decided to go ahead and just try it out.

Here is what I noticed about actually using the Kindle.

It’s light – It really is easy to hold.

The E-ink is easy on the eyes – I swear that it was easier to look at than reading off my laptop or desktop.

Amazon’s system for getting content works well – Once I connected my account, everything worked like it should.

It’s easy to get going – Absolutely no issues getting a book downloaded and start reading in relative e-comfort.

So you may be wondering why I didn’t really like it. Well here are the biggest reasons.

I like the feel of paper – I know it’s lame, but I do. It’s a personal thing.

Kindle books really aren’t much cheaper than a paper book – Not counting the freebies, there seemed to only be a 3 dollar difference in price. At least for the ones I wanted to read.

I don’t read like I use to – I do so much work and school that it is very rare for me to sit down and read.

PDFs show terribly – I had hoped I could use it for my classwork ( in PDF format) but the texts I could get to work were hard to read. And the Kindle doesn’t handle secure PDFs.

And here is the real kicker for me. What would happen if five years down the road the Kindle died? Could I guarantee that there would be something that could read the Kindle format?

So in the end, I had a book reader that only read one format really well, with books that were not a great savings over the paper versions, that I couldn’t guarantee would even be around in a decade. Instead of selling it off on Ebay, I decided that I would pass it on to someone that could use it. It wasn’t anyone here, instead it is being passed along to some family that were interested. Let’s hope they are able to use it and enjoy it.

Me? I would rather have gotten the cash that was originally spent on getting it instead… That would have been a lot of beer.